Worldwide Nanotechnology Development: A Comparative Study of USPTO, EPO, and JPO Patents

1
Worldwide Nanotechnology Development A
Comparative Study of USPTO, EPO, and JPO Patents

• Artificial Intelligence Lab
• Department of Management Information Systems
• University of Arizona
• May 2006

2
Outline

• Introduction
• Background and Research Objectives
• Research Design
• Dataset
• Basic Bibliographic Analysis
• Content Map Analysis
• Citation Network Analysis
• Conclusions

3
Introduction

• Nanotechnology
• A fundamental technology.
• Critical for a nations technological competence.
  
• Revolutionizes a wide range of application
  domains.
• Its RD status attracts various communities
  interest.
• Patent analysis has been widely used to assess a
  fields research and development status.
• (Huang et al., 2003a, Huang et al., 2004 )
  studied the longitudinal patent publications of
  different countries, institutions, and technology
  fields in the NSE field.
• (Huang et al., 2005) studied the impact of
  National Science Foundations funding on NSE
  patents.

4
Our Research

• Our research focuses on the NSE field and is a
  comparative study of NSE patents filed in USPTO,
  EPO, and JPO.
• The NSE research in German, P. R. China, South
  Korea, and France are also very active. Their
  patent offices documented many NSE patents
  (mostly in their own language). But in this
  research we focus on the patents documented in
  EPO and JPO, which have been translated into
  English.
• We use basic bibliographic analysis, content map
  analysis, and citation network analysis
  techniques.

5
Patent Offices in the World

• There are several governmental (e.g., USPTO) or
  intergovernmental (e.g., EPO) patent offices
  which control the granting of patents in the
  world.
• USPTO, EPO and JPO issue nearly 90 percent of the
  worlds patents (Kowalski et al., 2003).
• In the NSE field, the United States, the European
  group, and Japan dominate the patent publication
  in the USPTO filed patents (Huang et al., 2003a).
• The inventors may file their patents in different
  patent offices.

6
Background

• USPTO Patents
• US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) more than
  6.5 million patents with 3,500 to 4,000 newly
  granted patents each week.
• NSE patents represent the fastest growing
  technology field in the USPTO patent database
  since the1990s (Huang et al., 2003a).
• EPO Patents
• European Patent Office (EPO) more than 1.5
  million patents with more than 1,000 newly
  granted patents each week.
• European Patent Office provides an online patent
  search system, esp_at_cenet, which contains the
  structured patent information from EPO, JPO,
  USPTO, and other countries patent offices.
• JPO Patents
• Japan Patent Office (JPO) more than 1.7 million
  patents with 2,000 to 3,000 newly granted patents
  each week.

7
Utilizing Different Patent Offices Repositories

• To obtain a comprehensive understanding of a
  technology areas development, it is necessary to
  study the patents filed in different patent
  offices repositories.

8
Research Objectives

• Assess the NSE development status represented by
  USPTO, EPO, and JPO patents.
• Compare and contrast the differences in the NSE
  patents in the three repositories.

9
Research Design
We developed a framework to assess the RD status
of the NSE field based on the patents in the
three repositories USPTO, EPO, and JPO.
USPTO dataset
Patent parsing
Data acquisition
Research status analysis
USPTO database
Number of patents
Patent publication
Collected by keywords
EPO dataset
Average number of cites
Patent importance/ strength of a repository
EPO database
EPOJPO patent
Collected by keywords
Topic coverage
Content map
JPO patent
JPO dataset
Citation Network
Knowledge diffusion
Patent status
JPO database
Patent statuschecking
10
Research Design

• The framework contains three steps
• Data acquisition
• Retrieve patents from the three repositories
• Patent parsing
• Parse the free-text data to structured data
• Research status analysis

11
Data Acquisition

• Retrieve the patents from the three repositories
• A list of keywords can be used to search for
  patents related to a domain from the three
  repositories.
• USPTO
• USPTO provides online full-text access for
  patents issued since 1976.
• The patents can be searched using almost all the
  data fields of a patent.
• EPO
• esp_at_cenet provides online title-abstract access
  to EPO patents issued since 1978.
• The patents can be searched based on title,
  abstract, and some of the bibliographic data.
• JPO
• Patent Abstracts of Japan (PAJ) is the official
  patent database of JPO, which contains the
  patents issued since 1976.
• The PAJ database is difficult to spider. But its
  patents and patent applications can be searched
  from esp_at_cenet.
• Need to use the PAJ database to differentiate
  patents from patent applications.

12
Research Status Analysis

• We assess a fields research status using the
  following indicators.
• Patent publication
• Number of patents by country in each year
• Number of patents by country group in each year
• Number of patents by assignee in each year
• Number of patents by technology field in each
  year
• Patent importance / strength
• Average number of cites by country
• Average number of cites by assignee
• Average number of cites by technology field
• Topic coverage
• Content map analysis
• Knowledge diffusion
• Country citation network analysis
• Institution citation network analysis
• Technology field network analysis

13
Analysis Performed
14
Data USPTO Patents

• USPTO NSE patent collection
• Used an NSE keyword list to search patent title,
  abstract, and claim (title-claims search) in
  USPTO database (Huang et al., 2003).
• 13,469 patents were collected.
• Submitted by 4,807 assignees, 19,716 inventors
  and 57 countries.

15
Data USPTO Patents (cont.)

• Top 20 NSE assignees and countries based on
  title-claims search of patents published from
  1976 to 2004

16
Data EPO Patents

• EPO NSE patent collection
• Used an NSE keyword list to search patent title
  and abstract (title-abstract search) in
  esp_at_cenet.
• 2,597 EPO patents were collected.
• Submitted by 1,393 assignees, 5,905 inventors and
  44 countries.

17
Data EPO Patents (cont.)

• Top 20 NSE assignees and countries based on
  title-abstract search of patents published from
  1979 to 2004

OREALLOREAL (a French cosmetic composition
company)
18
Data JPO Patents

• JPO patent collection
• Used an NSE keyword list to search patent title
  and abstract (title-abstract search) in
  esp_at_cenet, which contains both JPO patent
  applications and JPO registered patents.
• The patent application ID was used to retrieve
  the patent status from the JPO database.
• 1,027 JPO registered patents were collected.
• Submitted by 419 assignees, 1,960 inventors.

19
Data JPO Patents (cont.)

• Top 20 NSE assignees based on title-abstract
  search of patents published from 1976 to 2004

20
Data USPTO, EPO, and JPO Patents

• The numbers of NSE patents published in USPTO
  and EPO continually increase.
• After 1993, the number of NSE patents published
  in JPO becomes stable.

(USPTO by title-claims search EPO and JPO by
title-abstract search)
21
Analysis
22
Basic Analysis- USPTO Patents by Country
USPTO Country

• Top 20 NSE assignee countries in USPTO
  (title-claims search) and their patents by
  year, 1976-2004

• The United States filed more NSE patents than
  other countries in the USPTO database.

23
Basic Analysis- USPTO Patents by Country
USPTO Country

• Top 20 NSE assignee countries (without U.S.) in
  USPTO (title-claims search) and their patents
  by year, 1976-2004

• There is an increasing trend of the number of
  NSE patents published by most countries.
• Between 2002 and 2004, the number of NSE patents
  published by France experienced a decrease.

24
Basic Analysis- EPO Patents by Country
EPO Country

• Top 20 NSE assignee countries in EPO
  (title-abstract search) and their patents by
  year, 1979-2004

• The United States filed more NSE patents than
  other countries in the EPO database.
• After 2000, the US and Japan NSE patents
  experienced a rapid growth in the EPO database.

25
Basic Analysis- EPO Patents by Country
EPO Country

• Top 20 NSE assignee countries (without U.S.) in
  EPO (title-abstract search) and their patents
  by year, 1979-2004

26
Basic Analysis- USPTO Patents by Country Group
USPTO Country Group

• Assignee country group analysis by year,
  1976-2004 (title-claims search)

• The European Group, Japan, and the Others Group,
  which contains all the other countries, have
  similar numbers of NSE patents in USPTO database.
• The US has many more NSE patents than the other
  three groups in USPTO.

27
Basic Analysis- EPO Patents by Country Group
EPO Country Group

• Assignee country group analysis by year,
  1979-2004 (title-abstract search)

• The US and the European Group have similar
  numbers of NSE patents in the EPO database.
• The Others Group and Japan have similar numbers
  of NSE patents in EPO.

28
Basic Analysis- USPTO Patents by Assignee
USPTO Assignee

• Top 10 NSE assignees in USPTO (title-claims
  search) and their patents by year, 1976-2004

• All the top assignees are US companies/institutio
  ns.
• IBM and Xerox were issued the greatest number of
  patents.
• The top 10 NSE assignees patents experienced a
  steady increase in these years.

29
Basic Analysis- EPO Patents by Assignee
EPO Assignee

• Top 10 NSE assignees in EPO (title-abstract
  search) and their patents by year, 1979-2004

• OREAL is a French cosmetic composition company.
• ROHM HAAS is a special material company.
• Samsungs patents steadily increased after 2001.
• The top 10 assignees consisted of companies/
  institutions from the US, Korea, Japan, etc.
• Even the top 10 assignees did not file a lot of
  patents in the EPO database.

30
Basic Analysis- JPO Patents by Assignee
JPO Assignee

• Top 10 NSE assignees in JPO (title-abstract
  search) and their patents by year, 1976-2004

• Most of the top assignees were Japanese
  companies/ institutions.

31
Basic Analysis- USPTO Technology Fields
USPTO Technology Field

• Top 10 technology fields according to the number
  of patents published between 1976 and 2004 based
  on US Class (title-claims search)

32
Basic Analysis- USPTO Technology Fields
USPTO Technology Field

• Top 10 US classification technology fields by
  year (1976-2004) (title-claims search)

• The numbers of patents in the top 10 technology
  fields have been increasing.
• Some technology fields, such as 257 Active
  solid-state devices (e.g., transistors,
  solid-state diodes), 438 Semiconductor device
  manufacturing process, 428 Stock material or
  miscellaneous articles, and 427 Coating
  processes, experienced a significant growth
  since 1997

33
Basic Analysis- EPO Technology Fields
EPO Technology Field

• Top 10 technology fields according to the number
  of patents published between 1979 and 2004
  (title-abstract search)

34
Basic Analysis- EPO Technology Fields
EPO Technology Field

• Top 10 technology fields by year (1979-2004)
  (title-abstract search)

• EPO and USPO have the same top 3 technology
  fields (in IPC classification).
• The technology fields A61K Preparations for
  medical, dental, or toilet purposes, H01L
  Semiconductor devices electric solid state
  devices, C01B Non-metallic elements compounds
  thereof, C08K Use of inorganic or
  non-macromolecular organic substances as
  compounding ingredients, and B01JChemical or
  physical processes, e.g. catalysis, colloid
  chemistry their relevant apparatus all
  experienced a steady increase in recent years.

35
Basic Analysis- JPO Technology Fields
JPO Technology Field

• Top 10 technology fields according to the number
  of patents published between 1976 and 2004
  (title-abstract search)

36
Basic Analysis- JPO Technology Fields
JPO Technology Field

• Top 10 technology fields by year (1976-2004)
  (title-abstract search)

• The top 3 technology fields (in IPC
  classification) in USPO also show up in the JPO
  top 10 list, but not the top 3. EPO and JPO share
  many common technology fields among the top 10.
• While many of the other technology fields
  experienced a decrease in recent years,
  technology field C01B Non-metallic elements
  compounds thereof, still kept a steady
  publication trend.

37
Analysis
38
Basic Analysis- Average Number of Cites by Country
USPTO/EPO Average Cites by Country

• USPTO top 10 countries with more than 20 patents
  based on the average number of cites measure
  (1976-2004) (title-claims search)

• EPO top 10 countries with more than 20 patents
  based on the average number of cites measure
  (1978-2004) (title-abstract search)

39
Basic Analysis- Average Number of Cites by
Assignee
USPTO/EPO Average Cites by Assignee

• USPTO top 10 assignees with more than 40 patents
  based on the average number of cites measure
  (1976-2004) (title-claims search)

• EPO top 10 assignees based with more than 15 on
  the average number of cites measure (1978-2004)
  (title-abstract search)

40
Basic Analysis- Average Number of Cites by
Technology Field
USPTO/EPO Average Cites by Tech Field

• USPTO top 10 technology fields with more than 40
  patents based on the average number of cites
  measure (1976-2004) (title-claims search)

• EPO top 10 technology fields with more than 15
  patents based on the average number of cites
  measure (1978-2004) (title-abstract search)

41
Analysis
42
Content Map Analysis
Documents
Topic Similarity
Visualization
Topics
Topic Relation Analysis
Keyword Extraction
Arizona NounPhraser
SOM Algorithm

• Technology topics ,represented by keywords in the
  documents, are extracted using a Natural Language
  Processing tool, the Arizona Noun Phraser, which
  can identify the key noun phrases based primarily
  on the linguistic patterns of free texts.
• The technology topics map are organized by the
  multi-level self-organization map algorithm (Chen
  et al., 1996 Ong et al., 2005) developed by the
  Arizona Artificial Intelligence Lab. This
  algorithm calculates the topic similarities
  according to the co-occurrence patterns of key
  phrases in document titles and abstracts.
• The topics are positioned geographically on a
  graph according to their similarity by the topic
  map interface.

43
Content Map Analysis (USPTO)
USPTO Content Map 1976-1989

• USPTO Content Map (1976-1989) (title-claims
  search)

44
Content Map Analysis (USPTO)
USPTO Content Map 1990-1999 2000-2004
-0.34 0.08 1.50 1.98 2.40 2.80
3.22 3.69 4.33 4.79 5.54
NEW

REGION
-1.96 -0.75 -0.12 0.35 0.77 1.17
1.59 2.07 2.71 3.17 3.92
NEW

REGION

• USPTO Content Map (1990-1999) (title-claims
  search)

• USPTO Content Map (2000-2004) (title-claims
  search)

45
Content Map Analysis (EPO)
EPO Content Map 1976-1989

• EPO Content Map (1978-1989) (title-abstract
  search)

46
Content Map Analysis (EPO)
EPO Content Map 1990-1999 2000-2004
2.38 3.59 4.22 4.71 5.12 5.53
5.94 6.42 7.06 7.52 8.27
NEW

REGION
-2.04 -0.83 -0.19 0.28 0.70
1.10 1.52 2.00 2.63 3.09
3.84 NEW


REGION

• EPO Content Map (1990-1999) (title-abstract
  search)

• EPO Content Map (2000-2004) title-abstract
  search

47
Content Map Analysis (JPO)
JPO Content Map 1976-1989

• JPO Content Map (1976-1989) (title-abstract
  search)

48
Content Map Analysis (JPO)
JPO Content Map 1990-1999 2000-2004
79.6 80.8 81.5 81.9 82.3 82.8
83.2 83.6 84.3 84.7 85.5
NEW

REGION
--3.3 -2.09 -1.45 -0.98 -0.56
-0.16 0.25 0.73 1.37 1.83 2.58
NEW

REGION

• JPO Content Map (1990-1999) (title-abstract
  search)

• JPO Content Map (1999-2004) (title-abstract
  search)

49
Analysis
50
Citation Network Analysis- USPTO Countries
USPTO Country Citation
(by title-claims search)
51
Citation Network Analysis- EPO Countries
EPO Country Citation
(by title-abstract search)
52
Citation Network Analysis- USPTO Institutions
USPTO Institution Citation
(by title-claims search)
53
Citation Network Analysis- EPO Institutions
EPO Institution Citation
(by title-abstract search)
54
Citation Network Analysis- USPTO Technology
Fields (US class)
USPTO Tech Field Citation
(by title-claims search)
55
Citation Network Analysis- EPO Technology Fields
EPO Tech Field Citation
(by title-abstract search)
56
Conclusions

• From the content map analysis, USPTO patents
  cover more topic areas than EPO and JPO.
• Many of the EPO and JPO topics were related to
  research tools/methods.
• Many of the EPO topics were related to physics
  research.
• USPTO topics covered research in physics,
  biomedicine, and electronics.
• The USPTO repository and EPO repository have
  different focuses and strengths in different
  technology fields, in terms of the cites per
  patent measure.
• In the institution citation network, USPTO
  institutions have more self-citations than EPO
  institutions.

57
Analysis Performed